Life Skills

 Teaching Jac to cut mushrooms. 

She won’t eat them but chopping them is funnnnnnnnnn.

Embellishment

I made this quilt way back in August 2021 (here), calling it “Retirement Goals” since hubby and I have talked often about visiting all most of the National parks once we retired. 

My plan was to embroider/embellish the block of each park we actually visited. The quilt has seen a lot of use, and done a lot of traveling - it’s one of my favorites - but I could never fix on an embellishment plan I was happy with. 

Until I got the MSQ Wildflower kit (here) - I really like the durability and colors of #8 perle cotton - and we decided to take a trip to Maine’s Acadia National Park (and more!) next week. Nothing like a deadline to get me motivated. 

I’m starting with a round of simple chain stitch in a variety of colors for the parks we’ve already visited together (solo visits, pre-married life, don’t count.) Maybe I’ll add some thread weaving and simple flowers later. 

So fun and a great tv watching project. Four parks ‘chained’, only 58-ish to go. 

Finished! But Not Mailed

I’d hoped to get this in the mail today 

54x54”

but Jac and I went to Simi to pick up my (hopefully) repaired sewing machine. New repair guy, at my usual repair shop, said he couldn’t find anything wrong except a bent needle . . . Crossing my fingers he’s correct but we’ll see . . .

I originally thought this one was going for donation (here) but Rachel said she wanted it (hooray!!) so I backed it with an orange print she picked out and then had it quilted with paisleys, one of her favorite designs.

So pretty. So soft. So glad it’s going to a good home. 

Spring Is Sprung

Spring is finally here (crossing fingers…)

Jac was out hunting lizards - she actually caught one last year and I don’t know who was more shocked, her or the lizard 😂 -

and practicing her rooster tail watering skills - I was standing well out of range -

for the first time this year.

Today’s Daily Jackie:

Me: I can’t find my phone.

Jac, age 7: You really need to be more responsible with your things. 

😳

Goldilocks

My big sewing machine started making funny noises and, just in case I didn’t get the hint, skipping every other stitch, so Friday I took it in for service a spa treatment.

Good news is I apparently hit a sweet spot and they think I’ll have it back in a week or so (it had been a 2-3 week backlog).

I’ve been using Big Baby, with its 9 mm feet, for all my quilting projects for, oh… 3 years now? But before that I did everything on my DC2011, which I adored. 

Too small…

Now…. it seems so small! Going back to 7mm feet feels so strange and I couldn’t for the life of me remember what the needle setting was for a 1/4” seam. 

Too big…

I have a bunch of projects in-progress but switching machines mid-stream seems (seams? 😂) like asking for trouble, plus the smaller machine can’t sew bindings (too many layers, not enough umph) which is what I’d planned to work on this weekend.

Just right

Soooooo, I started a new project.

Sew pretty! One quarter down, three to go. 

Roundup

Donovan was too sick to go to school this week so he got to stay home with us. 

(We’re hoping it was allergies, like his parents think…)

Poor baby fell asleep less than a minute into the drive to get Jac

I think we must have been pretty boring since his main question each day - asked often! - was “when does Jackie get out of school???”

Jac and I made a new-to-us bread that’s sooooooo easy. (Here)

Only 4 ingredients; mix, cover and set aside for 8-24 hours; then bake. So delicious! And it’s small loaf so it doesn’t go stale before we can eat alllllll of it. 

Aunt Teena made Leia the cutest Spiderman purse. I think she likes it!

Recount

Apparently I can’t count.

I thought the last block I finished (here) was #4 and was tearing my craft room apart trying to find the missing piece.

So, here’s Wildflower block #3, which I finished fourth. 

And #5 is well underway. Still having (miscounted) fun with these!

I’m struggling to get accurate pictures. The blue in #5 is closest to the actual dark denim color of the background fabric. 

Leftovers

 A few pics leftover from our trip…

I taught Jac to play the card game, Trash. She got it on the first try and then beat me on a regular basis. 😂

Mike and Teena, Isaac and Travis ⬆️

Giraffe toes ⬇️

Two-fer Fun

Wednesday was a loooonng day. It took us over 8 hours to drive from Pt Arena to our hotel in Monterey. 

We had decided not to go back the way we came - the road north from Petaluma to Pt Arena was not one we wanted to repeat - so we drove an hour north to Ft. Bragg, then took Hwy 20 to Willits and the 101 freeway. It added 2 hours to the drive but it was safer and less nerve-wracking. 

Today’s first stop was the Monterey Bay Aquarium where we were very surprised to find Disneyland-style entrance lines. 

Who knew it would be so busy on a Thursday in April??

Jackie on the half shell 

The crowd was pretty low key and the girls were able to get close to most of the exhibits they wanted to see. 

Our original plan was to drive home after that, but Pop was tired from previous day’s drive,

Koi pond at our hotel. Photo by Jaclyn 

and there was only one thing left on our wish-to-see list,

so we stopped for the night in Paso Robles

Almost full dark

and took the girls to the Sensorio light show. 

In the on-and-off rain. With wind-chill temp about 38°. Yep, we’re crazy.

Before the lights came on 

It was as beautiful as we remembered 

but the girls were less than impressed,

Pop and Leo’s favorite lights

probably because it was so cold and damp, 

Jac’s favorite

and we had to stand around waiting

My favorite

for over an hour until it was fully dark. 

So we offered to bring them back in the summer when it’s 110° 

Looking toward the entrance

and stays light out until after 9 pm.

From the entrance looking back across the fields

I think they’re going to pass on that… 😂

Tomorrow we head for home, for realz. The plan is to drop the girls with their parents and then sleep for two full days.

More aquarium pics:

Jac took these photos